One Heart
by Idiot Jello
Summary: “Mrs. Smith, we’re very sorry to tell you this, but we found a body…” After her husband's funeral, Rose is visited by his time-traveling counterpart. REWRITTEN


**_A/N:_ **I decided to rewrite this one, with more detail. It is unedited, and it's past midnight so frankly I don't give a llama's bottom about grammar. Please tell me what you think, and no, there will be no continuation. This is the ultimate sad ending for the Doctor and Rose.

* * *

Rose had gone through some pretty damn terrible experiences for a human being in her twenty-two years, but the worst moment of her life was not when her fingers slipped from that lever, or when her best friend exploded in golden light, or when she realized that the man she loved was leaving her—sure, leaving her with himself—but still _leaving_ her. The worst was an insignificant phone call, received at nearly midnight at their flat.

"_May be speak to Mrs. Smith_?" a detached, formal voice addressed her when she answered.

"Yes, this is her. Speaking?" Rose replied in equally distant politeness.

The voice faltered. "_Mrs. Smith, we've found a body_," it said at last, "_We believe it to be your husband's._"

The funeral felt strange, like Rose was watching her life disappear from a distance. She hadn't really realized the reality of it, but now, as she looked now at his pallid face, the fact that he _was _dead registered into her brain.

"Oh…God," she whispered, her lips barely moving. Rose wondered if Jackie had felt like this at Pete's memorial.

Stiffly, she walked away from the coffin and out of the church, in dire need of sanity. Images, those of that past few, horrible days flashed through her eyes. She felt as if she were drowning in her grief. It was inescapable.

He was gone. The Doctor was gone. For good. The original Doctor wasn't coming back, and her Doctor was dead. Dead. No coming back from that.

She didn't allow herself to think of 1987 and the Reapers. That was another circumstance entirely.

There was no hope, and Rose wasn't sure if that was a bad thing.

Rose was depressed, but she wasn't suicidal. She had promised the Doctor, on a day that seemed ages ago, that she would have a fantastic life. Rose had tried, and failed, but she would try again. She kept her promises.

But it was hard. Hope is a good emotion, she had decided, and without it she tended to drown. Consequently, she spent most of her vacation days she had taken away from Torchwood thinking about the Doctor. And that wasn't good.

The frantic ringing of her doorbell broke Rose out of her reverie. "Geez," she thought to herself, "Take a chill pill." She smiled despite herself, and Rose burned. The smile quickly faded, and she opened the door with her features carved in stone.

A very familiar face greeted her. Rose had seen so many emotions on this face, and those images came back and she winced under her armor. Right now, the face looked lost. Desperate. Rose wouldn't allow herself to feel sympathy.

"Why are you here?" Rose ground out, dropping her gaze. It hurt to look at him.

The Doctor approached her eagerly, relieved at her apparent acceptance of his presence. "Because I wanted to say it," he explains quickly, at a speed bordering on incoherency, "I was wrong, _so_ wrong. It needs saying. I had no _idea--_"

Rose couldn't believe him. Her husband had just died, and now this guy was telling her that he loved her? "Yeah, well, sucks to be you," she interrupted with hysterical sarcasm. Sarcasm was good. It was strength. "'Cause if you honestly believe I'll let you say it _now_," her hands flew out towards the sky in some wild gesture, "Then you're madder than I thought." She glared at him, feeling her anger coarse through her very veins. It overpowered the grief, tugging her out of her drowning. But maybe she wasn't drowning in water. Maybe it was quicksand: the more you struggled, the angrier you became, you would sink farther in…

He was looking at his trainers now. His argument—_I love you, baby, now that your husband is dead_—had been ill prepared and the Doctor knew it. So he played dirty.

"D'you wanna come with me?"

The question swirled between them, stirring up tension until it was so thick that the poor defenseless knife that you tried to cut it with ended up with its blade separated from the handle. Rose stared at him, wondering what had possessed him to knock on her front door and remind her that she was dying on the inside.

"You're not him," she said at last, coldly, "You were a friend, and he was a lover." Rose had meant that to be her final words to him. They seemed like good, memorable ones. She wasn't crying; she hadn't let him see how broken she was.

But the Doctor was lonely, more lonely than he had ever been. The loneliness had driven him insane, almost completely irrational—at least, when it came to Rose. He said, "We could be like that, if you wanted." He was offering her what she had always wanted, almost since day one.

"No," Rose said with no hesitation, "Sarah Jane told me that 'some things are worth having your heart broken for.'" She fixed him with her stare, her despair only seeping into her expression in hairline cracks. "You're one of those things, Doctor. But I've only got one heart, and it's not nearly as strong as yours. It's been broken too many times. And I can't." Rose _was_ crying now, and she was angry that she was, and that made her cry more. Circles. Endless circles of dissatisfaction. "I can't Doctor!" Rose screamed, "You need to leave me. Just _leave me_ so I can forget you!"

The Doctor's face was pale. Her words were knives in his chest. "You said…you said you'd be with me forever."

Through her tears, Rose let out a disbelieving scoff. "I didn't know you'd hold me to it!" Everything, everything had spiraled out of control since that phone call. Nothing made sense. And she was drowning, always drowning.

He was looking at his trainers again, but then met her gaze, and she was surprised to see a single tear slide down his cheek. "I love you, Rose," he told her, softly, desperately.

Rose nodded. Her tears had subsided. "I know." She laughed, bitterly. "I always knew. And now you have to go. For me." She turned in her doorway, reaching for the doorknob.

"You're killing me."

"I know that, too," Rose said before closing the door and pressing her ear against it. She heard nothing for a long time. Then fading footsteps, followed by the distant sound of engines. Through the silence that followed, the beat of her one heart brought fresh tears to her eyes.


End file.
